Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

U.S. states file updated antitrust complaint against Google

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 261 posts

Re: U.S. states file updated antitrust complaint against Google

#131

Post by underwater »

ReaLNero wrote: post #110
rapnie wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It always completely astounded me how countless professional businesses are casually and mindlessly handing over their most private internal communication and metrics to Google on a platter. And aren't Google's privacy policies and ToS's stating that all collected information can be used to "improve their own services" or something along those lines? Does that include 'extract business advantage' from your data? I do…

(Not a Google engineer) Google's engineers are notoriously loose-lipped (which is a good thing!!!). There's no way they would be able to keep a secret like this. Anytime a customer's private data gets accessed, you either a) need approval by someone or b) "break the glass", which is only reserved for oncall fires. Either way, it gets audited. The only way I would believe something like this is if an executive/higher…

That's assuming that there isn't another back channel to access that data.

And even if they don't access file or email content, metadata like access data like Play Store performance, Google searches for competing products, and Google Analytics data, might seem like fair game.

Re: U.S. states file updated antitrust complaint against Google

#132

Post by thow-01187 »

monkeydust wrote: post #91
mabbo wrote: post #53

As more data comes out about Google, Apple, Amazon, one simple underlying thing becomes clear: a single company cannot be trusted to operate a marketplace while also being a participant . Apple's App Store insider knowledge lets them discover popular apps, then boot them off the platform when they decide to compete. Amazon sees what products are successful and profitable, then makes knock-offs which they promote over…

As someone who's been involved in developing financial exchanges this concept is bizarre. There is regulation and participant agreements that would prevent NYSE for example from running its own market making firm and abusing it's position as exchange to benefit over other participants for profit, if it did this others would leave and the exchange would eventually die.

The notion of: "it's a little bit like X, a little bit like Y - but it's neither X nor Y, therefore we it's a wild-west anarchy without any rules or regulations" - this is such a glaring loophole in our legal system that it must be intentional. Derivatives bubble, ad-tech, gig-work, crypto-mania, AirBnB, and many other socially-parasitic enterprises exist solely because our legal code is missing "try-catch-finally" clauses

Re: U.S. states file updated antitrust complaint against Google

#133

Post by dannyw »

ReaLNero wrote: post #110
rapnie wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It always completely astounded me how countless professional businesses are casually and mindlessly handing over their most private internal communication and metrics to Google on a platter. And aren't Google's privacy policies and ToS's stating that all collected information can be used to "improve their own services" or something along those lines? Does that include 'extract business advantage' from your data? I do…

(Not a Google engineer) Google's engineers are notoriously loose-lipped (which is a good thing!!!). There's no way they would be able to keep a secret like this. Anytime a customer's private data gets accessed, you either a) need approval by someone or b) "break the glass", which is only reserved for oncall fires. Either way, it gets audited. The only way I would believe something like this is if an executive/higher…

How does Google respond to secret FISA orders which by law cannot be audited or known by anyone but the direct receiver and one pre-screened attorney?

Re: U.S. states file updated antitrust complaint against Google

#134

Post by laurent92 »

ngngngng wrote: post #67
mabbo wrote: post #53

As more data comes out about Google, Apple, Amazon, one simple underlying thing becomes clear: a single company cannot be trusted to operate a marketplace while also being a participant . Apple's App Store insider knowledge lets them discover popular apps, then boot them off the platform when they decide to compete. Amazon sees what products are successful and profitable, then makes knock-offs which they promote over…

Does this only go for internet companies? Or do you think it applies to Walmart selling its own Equate brand of everything or Costco selling its own Kirkland brand of everything?

There is urgence in banning Walmart from selling home brands next to competitors, because it has hampered the discussion on the GAFA monopolies every time it was asked! For its own sake, this is causing harm to the customer…

Re: U.S. states file updated antitrust complaint against Google

#135

Post by kaibee »

bananabreakfast wrote: post #86
charrondev wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m guessing that number is in reference to googles dominance of the search market? I’m assuming they are less than that with regards to the advertisement market (I’m not super familiar with the space, but as I understand Facebook is a huge player there as well).

What market though? There is no search market. It is a service given away for free. There is no such thing as a monopoly on something that does not cost anything.

> There is no such thing as a monopoly on something that does not cost anything.

This is the wrong way to think about it. How much would _Google_ be willing to pay to maintain that position? Well, Mozilla's primary source of revenue, is afaik, from having Google as the default search engine, so at least that much, for whatever percent of the browser market-share.

Re: U.S. states file updated antitrust complaint against Google

#136

Post by thow-01187 »

lenkite wrote: post #95
epistasis wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Amazon sees what products are successful and profitable, then makes knock-offs which they promote over the originals. And now, reading into this, Google is manipulating their ad markets using inside knowledge. This is nothing new, as brick and mortar retailers have store brands for popular products as well. While I'm glad that the move to the internet lets us reevaluate some of the social relations, I have a reeeea…

"This is nothing new, as brick and mortar retailers have store brands for popular products as well". The analogy seems spurious to me. Do brick and mortar retailers charge other brands for being a market-place ? Don't they actually buy products of other brands ?

Yes, this is the crucial difference

Brick and mortar stores are dealers, Amazon is a broker. Dealers have inventories - they purchase items from the suppliers and resell them - if they misjudge demand, they're left off with useless goods. Brokers simply facilitate a transaction between two parties - there's no risk involved. The fact that brokers get to charge a higher mark-up than dealers is just bizarre

Re: U.S. states file updated antitrust complaint against Google

#137

Post by philjohn »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #12
ZhangSWEFAANG wrote: post #5

What incentive is there for states to sue over monopolies? Is it simply to advocate for their constituencies?

Upholding the law? Having a functioning market and economy perhaps? It's the government's job to regulate the market. Abusing your (near) monopoly position to drive out competition is illegal.

There seems to be other equally pressing market capture targets to go after - Sinclair broadcasting being one example.

It seems interesting that "Old Media" is coming off unscathed and the ire is all directed at "New Media".

Re: U.S. states file updated antitrust complaint against Google

#138

Post by skinkestek »

Angostura wrote: post #121

> Apple's App Store insider knowledge lets them discover popular apps, then boot them off the platform when they decide to compete. Do you have examples, I’m aware of a few examples where Apple built features in that used to be 3rd party apps. But kick them off?

I'm fairly sure there was a high profile case this spring (was it when Apple announced they'd let you use an iPad as a second screen?)

I'm even more sure there was something going on even more recently with a third party apple watch keyboard for blind or something who got booted because "they abused accessible features" or something that had never been a problem before, and it so happened that Apple had a solution ready on their own launch a few days later.

Re: U.S. states file updated antitrust complaint against Google

#139

Post by eitland »

Still waiting for investigators to look into Chrome.

In 2009 we were finally getting rid of IE and the web browser market was a healthy ecosystem with lots and lots of innovation happening.

Today we are soon back on a browser monoculture with the owner of the most popular product being a company that has enormous interest in killing certain parts of the ecosystem and also has a long history of killing of their own products.

How did it happen? In my opinion: massive abuse of power in two other markets (search and ads) to push their way into browsers as well. (Well, I'm feeling I might have been too generous above: I could add 2 more - video and office tools - by pointing how they selectively make Google Docs and YouTube perform worse in Firefox, being so brazen about it that just changing the headers so that Firefox identifies itself as Chrome makes the problems go away.)

Re: U.S. states file updated antitrust complaint against Google

#140

Post by diggan »

eitland wrote: post #139

Still waiting for investigators to look into Chrome. In 2009 we were finally getting rid of IE and the web browser market was a healthy ecosystem with lots and lots of innovation happening. Today we are soon back on a browser monoculture with the owner of the most popular product being a company that has enormous interest in killing certain parts of the ecosystem and also has a long history of killing of their own pr…

Yeah, reminds me when Google purposefully blocked Firefox from accessing Inbox. Changing the user-agent revealed that they did that for no other purpose than "performance wasn't what we wanted" while the application worked fine as it was, proved by just changing the user-agent. They also let people use other applications that are slow in Firefox, like Google Photos, but somehow Inbox was different.

Gist: https://gist.github.com/VictorB/1d0f4ee6dc5ec0d6646e

HN comments at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8606879

Post reply on HN